Latest news with #SurfaceTransportationBoard
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
CPKC to remedy service disruptions impacting dwell times, switches
This story was originally published on Supply Chain Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Supply Chain Dive newsletter. Canadian Pacific Kansas City will update its inventory data and restore network fluidity as part of its plan to remedy service disruptions in the southern region of CPKC's network, per a June 20 report to the Surface Transportation Board. The railroad carrier has been facing technology changeover-related issues since the consolidation of CPKC's U.S. information technology systems on May 3, according to the report. Canadian Pacific merged with Kansas City Southern in 2023, creating a railway that connects the U.S. with Mexico and Canada. As part of the merger terms outlined in 2023, CPKC was to expand its network capacity and integrate its IT systems. In a June 17 letter addressed to CPKC, the board noted that its oversight data showed higher terminal dwell times at rail yards, slower average velocity and lower on-time performance as a result of the issues. STB further noted that customers were reporting elevated delays, missed switches and congestion issues. CPKC said it has been tackling problem areas since the date of the switchover to restore service levels. Data quality was a key issue for CPKC, driven by a difficulty to maintain accurate car inventories and up-to-date locations on railcars, per the document. Interchange data for some connecting carriers also experienced difficulties for cars being delivered to the railroad at legacy-KCS locations, since the processing required an extensive data rework. The data gaps meant that the necessary work orders could not be created until the data was re-worked manually. The issues then prompted congestion challenges at customer facilities and classification yards across the legacy-KCS network as railcards could not be properly processed. In turn, congestion was reflected in higher yard inventories, increased dwell times, lower train speeds and a surge in locomotive and crew resources to help keep traffic moving. Early instances of delays and congestion prompted a feedback loop, further exacerbating the situation. CPKC noted in the document that yard congestion made it more challenging to locate individual railcars routed for customer facilities, for instance. Service restoration efforts will fall into two broad categories, much of which has already been implemented, the railroad told the STB. First, CPKC will update inventory data so operating personnel and customers can generate waybills, which serve as a record of shipment origin, destination and other details. The railroad will also focus on restoring network fluidity after data gaps spurred during the IT system change compromised operations. To address data quality issues, CPKC has deployed cross-function 'SWAT-like' support teams composed of operations, IT, network support and marketing and sales experts. The teams were sent to several locations across the network facing issues, and worked with partners to improve the quality of submitted data for cars delivered to the legacy network by: Restoring missing car inventory data through field assessments of cards in yards and customer facilities across the legacy-KCS network. Assisting customers with re-billing railcars using correct fields and input data. Educating local operating personnel on how to properly use CPKC's IT systems and tablet interfaces to build and complete work orders and assignments. In terms of network fluidity, CPKC has: Routed railcars to bypass its Shreveport Yard in Louisiana, enabling Shreveport to focus on processing the backlog on the legacy-KCS network. Enabled personnel to use CPKC's legacy-CP portion of the network to help organize the delivery and pick up railcars at customer facilities. Embargoed railcars routed for customer facilities where the inventory of railcars precluded the receipt of additional cars. As of June 20, CPKC teams are focused on operations in the Artesia, Mississippi, area, where improvement is lagging, per the report. CPKC is also updating track identifications in complex terminal areas, including tracks initially used by customers for storage that were not properly marked in KCS's legacy management control system. Although CPKC stated that it is 'too early to offer firm predictions' regarding a full return to service, the carrier said operations should be fixed by mid-July. CPKC also reported that overall service levels have shown signs of improvement after efforts taken to stabilize operations since the transition. In addition to its monthly service metric reports, CPKC will submit a weekly report that logs recovery efforts and performance data to the Surface Transportation Board for as long as the service issues persist, per the statement. Recommended Reading Canadian Pacific, Kansas City Southern combine into CPKC
The Hill
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
The Supreme Court is reining in lower-court overreach on the environment
On May 29, the Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County curbed lower courts' ability to micromanage federal agencies' environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act. This landmark ruling frees agencies from decades of defensive, litigation-averse mindsets, boosting prospects for projects critical to addressing urgent economic and environmental challenges. The case centered on a proposed Utah railroad to connect the Uinta Basin's growing oil (and potentially mineral) production to the national rail network. To comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, the Surface Transportation Board had produced a 3,600-page environmental impact statement that thoroughly analyzed alternative options, mitigation strategies and public input. It then concluded that the project's benefits outweighed its environmental costs and issued an approval. Environmental groups and a Colorado county promptly challenged the decision in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, alleging that the Surface Transportation Board failed to adequately assess several environmental impacts, including those related to downstream oil refining and upstream drilling. The D.C. Circuit sided with several claims and vacated the approval. The Supreme Court, which hadn't addressed a National Environmental Policy Act case since 2004, saw a need for course correction. As Justice Brett Kavanaugh's incisive opinion noted, 'A 1970 legislative acorn has grown into a judicial oak that has hindered infrastructure development.' Congress enacted the National Environmental Policy Act to balance resource use, high living standards and a healthy environment, not to stifle progress. Yet, activist groups have weaponized it as a 'blunt and haphazard tool' to push unpopular policy agendas through litigation, undermining the law's effectiveness and skirting the democratic process. Kavanaugh's opinion clarified two key points. First, the National Environmental Policy Act is a 'procedural cross-check' in which agencies have substantial deference in how they evaluate environmental impacts. The judiciary's sole role is to confirm that agencies address environmental impacts and feasible alternatives, not to police their methods or paralyze projects. Second, agencies need not assess the environmental effects of separate projects, though they remain accountable for directly connected impacts — for example, of how runoff in a project might affect a fish population miles downstream. These clarifications are transformative. By rebuking dubious precedents set by lower courts, the Supreme Court has set agency reviewers free from an impossible situation wherein, as the Property and Environment Research Center noted, 'NEPA obligations could balloon as widely as the most creative plaintiff demands.' No longer sitting ducks for deep-pocketed green litigators, agencies can now move beyond 'litigation-proofing' their reviews. The days of an environmental impact statement averaging 4.5 years and 669 pages, with appendices topping 1,037 pages, should be over. Taxpayers will save money, large projects will become more viable and whole industries (e.g. mining) will come back to life. The only losers here are groups like the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and WildEarth Guardians, for whom grinding National Environmental Policy Act litigation was a cash cow. Although oil was the subject of this specific case, all forms of energy will benefit. As Kavanaugh pointed out, environmental groups have used this statute to 'fight even clean-energy projects — from wind farms to hydroelectric dams, from solar farms to geothermal wells.' The nuclear industry was arguably the highest-profile victim of the National Environmental Policy Act weaponization. The first major case, a 1971 D.C. Circuit challenge to a reactor's environmental impact study, resulted in an 18-month nationwide moratorium on reactor construction. This was the first devastating blow to the nuclear industry, which crumbled over the next decade and is still struggling to recover. This decision will also boost our country's capacity to mitigate the wildfire crisis. Forest management projects are the most common subject of National Environmental Policy Act litigation, according to a Breakthrough Institute study. The Property and Environment Research Center found that prescribed burns requiring an environmental impact study take an average of 7.2 years to implement. Ironically, despite their apparent concern about trains sparking wildfires in the Uinta Basin, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and WildEarth Guardians all have extensive track records of obstructing mitigation projects in forests that eventually fall victim to extreme wildfires. For example, the Center for Biological Diversity delayed a U.S. Forest Service forest thinning project that, if completed on schedule, could have saved the California town of Grizzly Flats, which was mostly decimated by the Caldor Fire in 2021. By removing this poison from the regulatory well, the Supreme Court has begun to clear the path to tackling our most pressing energy and environmental challenges. But the court can only do so much. The core of the National Environmental Policy Act's legislative text is still largely the same as it was in 1970. Congress needs to resolve its vulnerabilities as part of a comprehensive permitting reform, and codifying durable limits to judicial review should be a top priority. Fortunately, the Supreme Court just delivered a clear signal that it is time to act. Patrick Hynes is a fellow with ConservAmerica.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Litigation results in payments for southeast SD landowners along rail-to-trail route
Scenes from the old Napa-to-Platte rail line. (Courtesy of Friends of the Tabor to Platte Rail to Trail). Seven landowners in Bon Homme and Charles Mix counties will receive a total of nearly $128,000 from the federal government after the U.S. Court of Federal Claims found their land was taken without compensation to make way for a proposed hiking and biking trail. The ruling stems from a claim for compensation filed under the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause, which requires just compensation when private property is taken for public use, a process known as eminent domain. Attorneys from the St. Louis firm Lewis Rice represented the landowners. 'If the government takes 10 feet or 10 acres, you should be rightly compensated,' said attorney Meghan Largent. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX At issue is a 24-mile stretch of former railroad corridor between Tyndall and Ravinia in southeast South Dakota. On Aug. 18, 2023, the federal Surface Transportation Board issued a notice allowing the removal of the tracks and conversion of the corridor into a public trail. The stretch is part of a larger proposed rail-to-trail project, converting a 75-mile portion of the old Napa-to-Platte rail line to a trail from Tabor to Platte. A spokesperson with the transportation board declined to comment. Some sections of the rail-to-trail land are owned by the state. However, Largent said some sections within the 24-mile stretch are under easements, which are agreements allowing the crossing of someone else's land. She successfully argued that the purpose of the easement can't be changed without just compensation to the landowners. She said the $128,000 will be paid out of a federal judgment fund, and efforts to create the trail will continue regardless of the lawsuits. Robert Foley is with Friends of the Tabor to Platte Rail to Trail. 'No, it doesn't really doesn't impact the project,' he said. Foley said the project is moving forward. He said the group is raising its final $5,000 of funding for a $250,000 feasibility study. He said the study should be completed by late fall. Largent said her analysis shows another 120 landowners along the corridor qualify for compensation. They have until Aug. 18, 2029, to file a claim. The firm is already pursuing two more cases.
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Business Standard
30-05-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
US Supreme Court eases key environmental law to speed development projects
The Supreme Court on Thursday narrowed the scope of environmental reviews required for major infrastructure projects in a ruling that could accelerate development of railroads, highways and pipelines around the country. The 8-0 decision follows an appeal to the high court from backers of a multibillion-dollar oil railroad expansion project in Utah, which is aimed at quadrupling oil production in the remote area of sandstone and sagebrush. Environmental groups said the decision would have sweeping impacts on how the National Environmental Policy Act is applied. The landmark environmental law requires federal agencies to study the likely environmental impacts of government-funded projects in an often lengthy review process. President Donald Trump's administration has already said it's speeding up that process after the president in January declared a national energy emergency and vowed to boost US oil and gas production. Justice Brett Kavanaugh referred to the decision as a course correction in an opinion fully joined by four conservative colleagues. Congress did not design NEPA for judges to hamstring new infrastructure and construction projects, he wrote. The three liberal justices agreed the Utah project should get its approval, but they would have taken a narrower path. The justices reversed a lower court decision that required a more thorough environmental assessment and restored an important approval from federal regulators on the Surface Transportation Board. The board's chair, Patrick Fuchs, said the ruling reins in the scope of environmental reviews that are unnecessarily hindering infrastructure construction throughout the country. The case centres on the Uinta Basin Railway, a proposed 88-mile (142-kilometre) expansion that would connect the oil-rich region of northeast Utah to the national rail network, allowing oil and gas producers to access larger markets and sell to refineries near the Gulf of Mexico. The state's crude oil production was valued at USD 4.1 billion in 2024, according to a Utah Geological Survey report, and could increase substantially under the expansion project. Construction, though, does not appear to be imminent. Project leaders must win additional approvals and secure funding from private-sector partners before they can break ground, said Uinta Basin Railway spokesperson Melissa Cano. Environmental groups and a Colorado county had argued that regulators must consider a broad range of potential impacts when they consider new development, such as increased wildfire risk, the effect of additional crude oil production from the area and increased refining in Gulf Coast states. The justices, though, found that regulators were right to consider the direct effects of the project, rather than the wider upstream and downstream impacts. Kavanaugh wrote that courts should defer to regulators on where to draw the line on what factors to take into account. The goal of the law is to inform agency decision making, not to paralyse it, he said. The court's conservative majority has taken steps to curtail the power of federal regulators in other cases, however, including striking down the decades-old Chevron doctrine that made it easier for the federal government to set a wide range of regulations. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in a concurrence that the court could have simply cleared the way for the railway approval by saying that regulators did not need to consider increased fossil fuel production tied to the project. Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the case after facing calls to step aside over ties to Philip Anschutz, a Colorado billionaire whose ownership of oil wells in the area means he could benefit if the project goes through. Gorsuch, as a lawyer in private practice, had represented Anschutz. The ruling follows Trump's vow to boost drilling and shift away from former President Joe Biden's focus on renewable energy to combat climate change. The administration announced last month it's speeding up environmental reviews of projects required under the same law at the centre of the Utah case, compressing a process that typically takes a year or more into just weeks. The court's decision gives agencies a green light to ignore the reasonably foreseeable consequences of their decisions and avoid confronting them, said Sambhav Sankar, senior vice president of programmes at Earthjustice. Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Centre for Biological Diversity, said opponents would continue to fight the Utah project. This disastrous decision to undermine our nation's bedrock environmental law means our air and water will be more polluted, the climate and extinction crises will intensify, and people will be less healthy," she said. Utah Gov Spencer Cox, a Republican, said the ruling affirms a balanced approach to environmental oversight. He praised the railroad expansion as a critical infrastructure project that will help restore America's energy independence and bolster the state's rural economy. The project's public partner, a group of seven Utah counties, also applauded the ruling. It represents a turning point for rural Utah bringing safer, sustainable, more efficient transportation options, and opening new doors for investment and economic stability," said Keith Heaton, director of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition.
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Supreme Court wants to make it easier to build
The Supreme Court handed down an opinion on Thursday that reads like it was written by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, the authors of an influential book arguing that excessive regulation of land use and development has made it too difficult to build housing and infrastructure in the United States. (Ezra is also a co-founder of Vox.) Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado concerns a proposed railroad line that would run through 88 miles of Utah, connecting the state's oil-rich Uinta Basin to the broader national rail network. The line is expected to make it easier to transport crude oil extracted in this region to refineries elsewhere in the country. The Court's opinion in Seven County places strict new limits on a federal law that a lower court relied upon to prevent this line from being constructed — limits that should make it easier for developers to build large-scale projects. Before this rail project can move forward, it must be approved by the Surface Transportation Board. Under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), moreover, this board is required to produce an environmental impact statement, which identifies any significant environmental effects from the rail project as well as ways to mitigate those effects. Significantly, as Justice Brett Kavanaugh explains in the Court's Seven County opinion, 'NEPA imposes no substantive environmental obligations or restrictions' on the board or on any other federal agency. It requires agencies to identify potential environmental harms that could arise out of development projects that they approve, but once those harms are identified in an environmental impact statement, the agency is free to decide that the benefits of the project outweigh those harms. Nevertheless, NEPA is often a significant hindrance to land development because litigants who oppose a particular project — be they environmental groups or just private citizens looking to shut development down — can often sue, claiming that the federal agency that must approve the project did not prepare an adequate environmental impact statement. As a result, Kavanaugh writes in his Seven County opinion, 'litigation-averse agencies…take ever more time…to prepare ever longer EISs for future projects.' Indeed, the Seven County case itself is a poster child for just how burdensome NEPA can be. The Surface Transportation Board produced an environmental impact statement that is more than 3,600 pages, and it goes into great detail about the rail line's potential impact on topics ranging from water quality to vulnerable species, such as the greater sage-grouse. Nevertheless, a federal appeals court blocked the project because it determined that this 3,600-page report did not adequately discuss the environmental impacts of making it easier to extract oil from the Uinta Basin. The appeals court reasoned that the agency needed to consider not just the direct environmental impacts of the rail line itself but also the impact of increased drilling and oil refining after the project is complete. All eight of the justices that heard the Seven County case (Justice Neil Gorsuch was recused) agreed that this appeals court decision was wrong, although Kavanaugh's majority opinion for himself and his Republican colleagues is broader than a separate opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The justices' agreement in Seven County, moreover, mirrors a growing bipartisan consensus that NEPA has become too much of a burden to development. As Kavanaugh notes in his opinion, President Joe Biden signed legislation in 2023 that limits environmental impact statements to 150 pages and requires them to be completed in two years or less. Still, Kavanaugh's opinion goes even further, repeatedly instructing courts to be deferential to an agency's decision to greenlight a project after producing an environmental impact statement. One striking thing about Kavanaugh's opinion is how closely it mirrors the rhetoric of liberal proponents of an 'abundance' agenda, which seeks to raise American standards of living by promoting large infrastructure projects. These proponents often claim that well-meaning laws intended to advance liberal values can have the opposite effect when they impose too many burdens on developers. As Kavanaugh argues, NEPA has 'transformed from a modest procedural requirement into a blunt and haphazard tool' that even stymies clean energy projects ranging 'from wind farms to hydroelectric dams, from solar farms to geothermal wells.' Broadly speaking, Kavanaugh's opinion imposes two limits on future NEPA lawsuits. The first is simply a blunt statement that courts should be highly reluctant to second-guess an agency's decision that it has conducted an adequate environmental review. As Kavanaugh writes, 'the bedrock principle of judicial review in NEPA cases can be stated in a word: Deference.' Kavanaugh also criticizes the appeals court for blocking one project — the Utah rail line — because of the environmental impacts of 'geographically separate projects that may be built' as a result of that rail line, such as an oil refinery elsewhere in the country. As Kavanaugh writes, 'the effects from a separate project may be factually foreseeable, but that does not mean that those effects are relevant to the agency's decisionmaking process or that it is reasonable to hold the agency responsible for those effects.' Both Kavanaugh and the separate opinion by Sotomayor also point to the fact that 'the Board here possesses no regulatory authority over those separate projects.' That is, while the transportation board is tasked with approving rail lines, other agencies are in charge of regulating projects, such as oil wells or refineries. As Sotomayor writes, an agency is not required to consider environmental harms that it has 'no authority to prevent.' So Seven County is a fairly significant victory for land developers as well as for traditional libertarians and for liberal proponents of an abundance agenda. It significantly weakens a statute that has long been a bête noire of developers.
